The Riviera Next Door

By JULIE V. IOVINE

Published: May 14, 1995

THE Connecticut landscape conjures images of stone walls, tony suburban houses and the perfect ratio of split rails and wrought-iron gates. Joan and Michael Gray's garden is different. For starters, there is the scent of rosemary wafting off the terrace. Squint into the sun reflected in the Long Island Sound below and, for a second, you might be in Cannes waiting for Cary Grant to pick your pockets. The pool across the lawn prolongs the fantasy. It is smack against a sea wall so close that the occasional wave laps over a low flagstone parapet. The peaked tin roofs of two attendant pavilions strike a most un-Connecticut-like note of seaside pageantry.

This backyard idyll was not achieved without effort. Joan Gray had first imagined something more lush, more English for her garden by the sea. Nature soon instructed otherwise: "With the first storm, everything I'd planted near the water was gone." Through trial and error she discovered the hardier strains -- rosa rugosa (beach roses); blue, not Peegee hydrangea; wisteria and Scotch broom -- that actually thrive being blasted by wind and salt water. But as stout and sturdy as her plantings, the garden still has an aura as delicate and wistful as a Mediterranean breeze.

Photo: This Connecticut pool is so close to Long Island Sound the swimmer feels submerged in both. (PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM MCWILLIAM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)